Thanks for the tips everyone... Being the obsessive overthinker that I am, I
typically put quite a bit of thought into these party playlists, as music
can really make a huge difference. 

For this one, I've taken some of the recommendations here, but I've also
scanned the billboard top 100 for hits spanning about 50 years. Stuff that
topped the charts during the summer months. Most I've done are 70s to
current, but also some older stuff. I've also found it works really well to
use cross-generation hits. For example it doesn't matter if you use the Neil
Diamond version of Red Red Wine or UB40's, both generations will be familiar
with the song and relate to it. I do a lot of those, and also some punked up
versions of 70s hits, such as the Me First and Gimme Gimme covers. Plus some
fun short stuff, like the underdog theme song, or the oompa oompa song, that
gets people laughing. Some motown always works well too.

Now I'm thinking about songs that were covered multiple times that were hits
for different generations. One comes to mind that I heard two versions of
recently, I drove all night by Cyndy Lauper and also by Pinmonkey, and the
people that played them had never heard the Roy Orbison version. 

We have a squeezebox connected to the stereo here, and have 15,000 mp3s on
the server, and I've got another 4000 CDs, so we end up adding things as we
see how people react too. We're gonna have about 100 people at this party
and it will go all day, doing the playlist and really seeing people light up
when they hear something they loved by had forgotten about is really one of
the most fun things for me. Kinda the whole reason I started Audities in the
first place.

Cheers,
Gary